#butterflies

You can only chase a butterfly for so long. ↗

— Jane Yolen

#butterfly #chase #culloden #historical-fiction #jane-yolen

Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men. ↗

— Giorgio de Chirico

#butterflies #catches #common #distraction #fatal

Musical ideas sprang to my mind like a flight of butterflies, and all I had to do was to stretch out my hand to catch them. ↗

— Charles Gounod

#catch #flight #had #hand #i

I also had this artist friend who'd paint butterflies and things like that on my head. ↗

— Persis Khambatta

#artist #butterflies #friend #had #head

It's so bizarre, I'm not scared of snakes or spiders. But I'm scared of butterflies. There is something eerie about them. Something weird! ↗

— Nicole Kidman

#bizarre #butterflies #eerie #i #scared

The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows. ↗

— P. G. Wodehouse

#because #butterflies #him #least #links

A climate's changes are tough to quantify. Butterflies can help. Entomologists prefer "junk species--" the kind of butterflies too common for most collections-- to keep up with what's going on in the insect's world. They're easy to find and observe. When do something unusual, something's changed in the area. Art Shapiro's team at UC Davis monitors ten local study sites, some since the 1970s. The ubiquitous species are the study's go-tos, helping distinguish between lasting changes (climate warming, habitat loss) and ones that will right themselves (one cold winter, droughts like last year's). Consistency is key; they collect details year after year, no empty data sets between. A few species have disappeared from parts of the study area altogether, probably a lasting change. On the other hand, seemingly big news in 2012 might be just a year's aberration. Two butterflies came back to the city of Davis last year, the umber skipper after 30 years, the woodland skipper after 20-- both likely a result of a dry winter with near-perfect breeding conditions of sunny afternoons and cool nights. ↗

— Johnson Rizzo National Geographic Feb.

#changes #climate-change #environment #habitat #patterns

The butterflies have flown away, like my ignorance and youth. ↗

— Eileen Granfors

#coming-of-age #mariposas #age

Illium says that perhaps I can use them to flutter someone to death. - Aodhan to Jason, Archangel's Storm ↗

— Nalini Singh

#butterflies #illium #death

When I was a girl I would look out my bedroom window at the caterpillars; I envied them so much. No matter what they were before, no matter what happened to them, they could just hide away and turn into these beautiful creatures that could fly away completely untouched. ↗

— Patch Adams

#caterpillars #sad #sadness #sorrow #beauty